Je siffle au bord du quai mixes two works originally separate Je siffle and Au bord du quai.
This installation takes place outdoor in a wood near a lake with seven speakers fixed on seven trees and diffuses a nearly musical dotted line, an extended succession, interrupted by silences, of a long frayed whistling’s fragments.
A long broken whistling in search of its own melody, a primitive musical improvised speech created from its very self, moving forward at the mercy of melodious snippets, of suspended notes, of beginnings, suspensions, repetitions, hesitations, returns, variations.
The whistled sequences are diffused, one after the other, on five speakers, going from one to the other, the same way a person would do while walking in the wood around the trees, without any other logic than that of the inner thought process.
Alternately to whistling, the two other speakers diffuse a series of recordings, at the edge of the platform, passings of full speed trains, and the feeling that someone cuts your head off. These abrasive sequences, punctuated, flung, held back, by ultra-short percussive sounds, comparable to manipulations of glassware seem to happen almost by chance, right in the middle of the whistling which they come to perturb, awaken, interfere with.
This installation which can be heard from the far as a discreet and discontinuous presence requires a listener in motion, in search of the sounds, of their appearances, of their displacements (from one speaker to the other), the sounds perceived from afar or nearby.
 

version indoor

The idea of the piece comes from an habit that I have: when I have to visit a place, I whistle while moving, I improvise some melodies then I listen the silence, as a first tracking, scouting, a first measurement.
For this first version of the piece, the installation found its rhythm with the interconnection of the sounds of the whistling and the interruptions of the train. The installation takes place in the two spaces of the gallery, leaves the spaces empty (floors and centers unoccupied), only the speakers occupy the periphery of the walls. It plays with the particularly reverberating acoustics of the spaces (no isolation device has been installed on the floors or the walls, the space is blank, raw), the sounds resonate, each short sequence is followed by its echo, the sounds hit against the walls, bounce, misleading us about their source. 

Au bord du du quai – version with 2 speakers

Au bord du quai is located on two speakers hung from one of the walls. We can hear a series of recordings, at the edge of the platform, passings of full speed trains, and the feeling that someone cuts your head off. Abrasive sequences, punctuated, flung, held back, by ultra-short percussive sounds, comparable to manipulations of glassware. These micro-structured sequences, interrupted by very long silences, seem to happen almost by chance, right in the middle of the empty space which they come to perturb, awaken, interfere with.